Language and languages, mostly but not always about English

14/01/2008

English in the Times

Early in January this year the Times had a series of questions about school subjects to test readers’ knowledge. I accept that it was intended rather light-heartedly but that is no excuse for inaccuracy. Here are the English language with the Times’s correct version in brackets, followed by my comments in italics.

Rearrange the following so that the prepositions are no longer at the end of the sentence.(That is incorrect. It should be ‘ends of the sentences’ to follow through the plural nature of ‘prepositions’.)

1 There is a box. A pair of football boots is inside. (There is a box. Inside is a pair of football boots.)

In terms of colloquial language both sentences seem equally acceptable with little or nothing to choose between them. But if we are talking of grammar, the Times has committed a major blunder. The word ‘inside’ is an adverb not a preposition here, and moving it to the beginning of the sentence changes nothing grammatically. A preposition must by definition be associated with a noun, and it is the separation of the preposition from the noun that offends those who see in the very name ‘pre-position’ the need, which cannot be avoided in Latin languages (or indeed in German), to place it immediately before the noun. In the above example there is no noun, so ‘inside’ is just as much an adverb as ‘here’ is in:

A pair of football boots is here.

Unusually, English has a class of words that are either adverbs or prepositions as the context defines them. Consider these examples with ‘up’:

He looked up her address (adverb)

He looked up her skirt (preposition)

It happens that ‘inside’ is one of these words. The prepositional forms that correspond to the Times’s example are:

There is a box. A pair of football boots is inside it.

There is a box. Inside it is a pair of football boots.

2 Who do you think you’re bloody well talking to? (To whom do you think you’re bloody well talking?)

This wh- question is one of the classic sentence types (relative clauses and passive sentences are the others) that can be rewritten with the preposition at the beginning of the sentence. From the grammatical point of view this example is unremarkable, but is it natural? To me the style clashes with the register and it is reminiscent of Eliza Doolittle wishing to have it known, in a most refined voice, that she had come ‘in a bloody taxi’.

3 There is a table, which the phone is on. (There is a table, on which is the phone.)

An unremarkable relative clause transposition. But really I can only imagine either of these sentences appearing in the stage setting for a play. Otherwise the natural idiom is surely:

The point here is essentially the same as for 1 above, but in this case there is an adverb ‘afterwards’ that can – and should – be used. Of the use of ‘after’ as an adverb the OED says:

Formerly used before the vb., now only at the end of a sentence or clause, and chiefly in phr. before or after, or … In combination with another adv. of time or adverbial phrase, soon after, long after, an hour, a year after. The day, the year after = next following.

Fowler is silent on this question.

It is easy – at least at first sight – to misread the Times’s answer with ‘after’ as a conjunction, meaning that Jimmy came after Joseph (who, perhaps, was disqualified despite being the first actually to cross the line).

I would also quibble with the use of a colon in this example. To my mind a semi-colon is the appropriate stop here.

Identify the punctuation marks from their description.(Once again, this is incorrect. It should be ‘descriptions’ to follow through the plural nature of ‘marks’.)

1 They parenthesise. (Brackets (or parentheses))

Yes, brackets do. But so do commas (non-defining relative clauses are parentheses) and dashes.

2 They are used in both a rhetorical and a non-rhetorical way. (Question mark)

Not ‘question marks?

3 An undernourished tadpole denoting either possession or abbreviation. (Apostrophe)

An abbreviation is something like ‘etc.’, which is marked, if at all, with a full stop. Apostrophes are used to mark contractions.

Are the apostrophes in the following sentences used correctly?

1 A ladys’ entitled to change her mind from time to time. (Incorrect)

2 It’s indeed shocking how they behave. (Correct)

3 The chairwoman’s slip was showing. (Correct)

4 The matching towels were marked his and hers’. (Incorrect)

5 “D’ont you dare put those compasses in his ear, young man,” screamed the teacher. (Incorrect)

6 Ignoring the best efforts of Jamie Oliver, the morbidly obese child tucked into a sugar d’on’t. (Incorrect)

Is this a credible error? Do’nut would make sense but the COED has donut as the US spelling of doughnut.

7 That degree of flare in the trouser had not been seen since the 70’s. (Incorrect)

8 (Photo caption) Guards marching across St James’s Square. (Correct)

I would regard 7 and 8 as matters of style. I prefer 70s but there is no obvious reason for rejecting the form with the apostrophe. Similarly, if we write about and say Xerxes’ army and Jesus’ disciples, a preference for James’s and Thomas’s can surely only be a matter of style that is of no linguistic interest.